The maximum length a walleye has been seen at is about 30 inches, and they’ve weighed as much as 15 pounds. How fast they grow depends partly on where they’re located southern-ranging walleye tend to grow more quickly, and females often end up larger than males. They can live for several decades  the maximum recorded age of a walleye is about 29 years. If the population being studied is subject to heavy fishing, likely walleye won’t live for more than 6 years.

Walleyes are mostly olive and gold in color this is where they get the name ‘dore’ in French, meaning ‘golden’. The dorsal, or back, of a walleye is colored olive, and this shifts to gold on the flanks. This olive and gold coloring pattern also has a few darker saddle-like structures that extend to the upper sides of the fish. From flank to belly, the golden color lightens to white. A walleye’s mouth is very large and has a good deal of sharp teeth for eating minnows and the other fish it encounters, and a walleye’s fins are basically composed of the same material that the spinal cord is.

You can easily distinguish a walleye from a sauger (which is a close relative to the walleye) by looking at the lower part of the caudal fin. On the walleye, this is white, but this coloring isn’t present on the sauger. Also, the dorsal and caudal fins of the sauger have a series of black dots, where walleye fins are plainly colored.

These are a few things to know about walleye fish. Once you know their feeding times and spawning habits, you can know where to be at a given time of the year to best be able to catch them. Walleye fish are a very hard prize for a fisherman to obtain, but they give plenty of bragging rights in addition to simply tasting good when cooked.

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